


Dead Ahead

by pinstripedJackalope



Series: As Above, So Below—As Before, Once Again [3]
Category: The Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Airplanes, Airports, Airsickness, Fluff, Herongraystairs, It's pretty fluffy, Motion Sickness, Multi, Sick Will Herondale, Sickfic, Time Travel Fix-It, Twilight References, carsickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:40:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22541131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: Will spends his first day in the future feeling motion-sick and miserable.  Alas, tis for love--so long as he has his two favorite people with him he knows he'll be all right.
Relationships: Jem Carstairs/Tessa Gray, Jem Carstairs/Tessa Gray/Will Herondale, Tessa Gray/Will Herondale
Series: As Above, So Below—As Before, Once Again [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588069
Comments: 11
Kudos: 52





	Dead Ahead

Will’s first night in the future didn’t turn out nearly as strange as he thought it would. Part of it, he supposed, as he was changing into modern clothes in a place called a mall, was the fact that he only had eyes for Jem and Tessa. They fit in here without trying—they’d seen the world change, and had changed with it, but not so much as to be unrecognizable. It was easy, following their instructions. They told him what to do and he did it, no questions asked. Walking to the hotel, all the futuristic lights of the city seemed to exist in order to light Jem and Tessa, to allow him to look at them even when the darkness should have swallowed them whole. He let Tessa clean the blood off the rune carved into his throat, let Jem hand him a quick dinner of a dish described as Chinese stir-fry, and bathed in the knowledge that he _had them_ , had them _both_ , all the way up until he found himself nodding off in the hotel chair where he sat. 

“Come on,” Tessa said, with a small smile, reaching her hand out to him. He didn’t have to think before he took it. 

In the bathroom he bobbed his head along as Jem and Tessa tried to explain the intricacies of modern indoor plumbing with straight faces, changed into the pajamas they bought for him, brushed his teeth with the excruciatingly minty paste that Tessa provided, and then, all at once, tumbled into a bed much softer than the ones a hundred years ago. The heat of Tessa beside him, and Jem’s hand in his own when he reached over and found it, both did their fair share to drag him down to sleep. 

He was the last one up come morning, his body exhausted from the journey across the turn of the millennium. Jem sat in the chair across from him, fiddling with a small, glowing device with a lot of buttons. He smiled as Will came alive, groaning.

“Morning!” Tessa said, on the other side of the room. She was sifting through her bag, looking for clothes to wear.

“Hngg…” Will said back. He scrubbed both hands through his hair. “You people are early risers.”

“I wouldn’t call myself an early riser, necessarily,” Tessa said, as Jem rolled his eyes. Will, however, wouldn’t hear it—any time before ten was early in his book, and it was certainly before ten right now. He groaned again and rolled himself from the bed. 

A few minutes in the bathroom and he’d donned his modern clothes once more, letting Tessa tuck his old outfit into her bag. The three of them then went down to the breakfast provided by the hotel, where they decided, over styrofoam bowls of cold cereal drenched in milk, that both Jem and Will would join Tessa at her home. 

Thus came their first challenge. To get to Tessa’s home, according to Tessa, they had to get to America. To get to America, they had to take an airplane. To get to the airplane, they had to take a car. And with the car came the first hurdle of that first challenge, for Will had never heard of an auto-propelled vehicle before, let alone ridden in one. The closest thing he had for comparison, transportation-wise, was a carriage—and Mortmain’s demonic automatons the closest comparison mechanics-wise. He was, understandably, a little concerned.

“They’re nothing like the automatons,” Tessa assured him on their way from the hotel room to the ‘car garage’. The vehicles certainly didn’t look anything like an automaton—the vast majority of them were rounded boxes mounted on rubber wheels, though Jem did point out one called a ‘motorbike’ that looked like what an oddly proportioned bicycle would look like after Henry had gotten his hands on it, if Henry had also had a propensity toward glossy paint and something called ‘chrome’. 

The car they ended up getting into was fairly small, a nondescript dust gray. Jem opened a door for Will, who marveled at the ease of it. Cars, he’d discovered from bumping into one, were a lot weightier than they looked, and seeing as they looked like solid hunks of whatever they were made of, that was saying something. And yet the people here didn’t seem to notice that they were riding around in self-propelled mechanical beasts made of more than a few hundred kilograms’ worth of metal and strange man-made materials. Will had seen more than one person leaning out the window of a moving vehicle, hollering at people walking on the side of the road, and it _astounded_ him. The future, he’d found, was both incredibly strange and incredibly mundane all at once.

“Alright,” Tessa said once Will had taken his seat. It was strange to be facing forward—he was used to the rear-facing seats in the front of a carriage. And that wasn’t the only odd thing: the driver, it turned out, was situated inside the vehicle, which was controlled by a series of levers, buttons, pedals, and wheels. It was all very complicated. 

And then it got more complicated still as Tessa said, “Seatbelts,” and Jem reached forward from the back to show Will a strap on the side of the vehicle’s interior that was apparently meant to cross over his chest and lap and buckle on his side. Tessa buckled hers with a click, and there was another click from behind him as Jem did his, as well. Then Tessa produced a strange metal key, which she slid into a slot on the front of the car’s interior—the dashboard, she’d called it, which Will had to laugh at. The dashboard of a carriage went on the outside, between the driver and the horses, not on the inside. Alas, the future was what it was, and Will was forced to accept it and move on.

Tessa turned the key and with a mechanical rumble the engine of the beast came to life. Will felt it under him, a strange sort of buzz that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. With the engine came two strong lights on the front of the vehicle, and Will couldn’t help himself when he asked, “How do you keep them from going out while you’re moving? Doesn’t the wind blow them out?”

“What—the headlights?” Tessa asked, pointing ahead toward them. Will nodded. “Oh. They’re electric.”

“Electric,” Will repeated.

“Like lightning,” Jem supplied, which cleared up absolutely nothing as the bright yellow lights looked nothing like the sharp flashes of white that arced across the sky. Jem and Tessa both seemed content to leave it there, however, so Will _harrumphed_ and put his questions away for later.

“Okay,” Tessa said. “I’m going to move now. There’s a handle by your window there, see? You can hold on if you feel nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” Will said, perhaps a little too quickly. Behind him, Jem laughed, and Will felt his heart beat quicker for just a moment. There had been a moment, with Brother Zachariah, that he’d been afraid that he’d never hear that sound again. It was so good to hear it, to hear and see and even feel Jem without the unnatural coldness that the runes of the Silent Brothers had bestowed upon him. Will took hold of the handle with one hand, and slipped the other into the gap between the two front seats of the car, waiting until Jem took it. He squeezed Jem’s warm fingers.

Pulling out of the parking spot and winding their way out of the garage was fairly painless. The engine was loud, especially with the echo of the concrete walls, but Will was getting used to it. Then they reached a street, the other cars whizzing past them, and Jem let go of Will’s hand to pat him on the shoulder. “Cars can go pretty fast, so prepare yourself,” he said.

And that? That was exactly why Will was just a _little concerned_. “How fast are we talking? Faster than a gallop?” he asked.

Tessa frowned and looked at Jem in the back-facing mirror mounted to the roof at the front of the vehicle. Will could only assume that Jem had the same look about him as he said, “A bit faster, yeah.”

Will swallowed. “Give me a number.”

Another look, a nod, and then Tessa said, “If we go on the highway and break a few laws we can get up to a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour.”

Jaw dropping open, Will twisted in his seat to look between the two of them. “You’re _joking_. Per _hour_? I’d have gotten to Cadair Idris in, what, two _hours_ at that speed. There’s no way that’s a real number!”

“Just… keep your seatbelt on,” Tessa said. Will shook his head, and then, just like that, they were pulling out onto the street.

Being inside a car was an entirely different thing from watching them driving past, was the first thing Will discovered about cars. The ride, first of all, was smooth. Much smoother than a carriage ride—partly, he assumed, because of the smoothness of the tarmac that made up the streets now. Second of all, the noise from outside was muffled, but everything was accompanied by the sound and the feel of the rumbling engine. There was also something to be said about being surrounded by glass on all four sides. You couldn’t draw the curtains like you could on a carriage—you were expected to keep vigilant even as a passenger, watching the world move around you. There was some metaphor in there, Will knew, but he couldn’t quite parse what it was. He’d have to come back to it. For now, he focused instead on watching all the buildings pass them by. The buildings, and the cars, and the people in their strange modern clothes were endlessly fascinating. 

“How are you doing?” Tessa asked as they slowed to a stop at an intersection. Streams of cars crossed in front of the car, heading perpendicular to them. Their motion, as far as Will could tell, was controlled by a series of lighted signals in different colors, all mounted on great metal poles. Will was still deciphering the system, but he was sure he’d have a grasp on it soon enough. He told Tessa as much, adding on that he’d yet to see them accelerate faster than a gallop.

“I thought you said these things were fast,” he said pointedly. 

“Alright, alright,” Tessa said, with a delightful laugh. She then hit a little lever beside the wheel, which lit up a minuscule light on the dashboard in front of her, pulling into a different flow of cars. 

The difference was immediate. The car sped up, racing to catch up with the car in front of them, railings and buildings whipping past the windows, and oh, lord, Tessa was right, this was _definitely_ faster than a gallop. Will clutched the handle by the window, letting out a holler. Tessa flicked on the little lever again, looking in her mirrors and then guiding them into a space between two cars to their right, which were moving just as fast as she was. Some of the cars around them were moving even faster still than that, some even winding through the streams of cars with wild abandon, searching like predators for open space in which to accelerate even further. Tessa moved them to the right, into the faster streams of cars, joining them in the search for higher and higher speeds.

It was exhilarating. It was terrifying. It was… a little nauseating, if Will was being honest. 

“Doing all right, Will?” Jem asked from the back of the car.

It took a moment for Will to answer, but he managed to get out a, “Depends. Is it a normal car experience to feel a little nauseated?”

“It can be normal, especially if you’re not used to it,” Tessa said, a touch of concern in her voice. “Do I need to pull off the highway?”

“No, I’m fine.” He closed his eyes for a moment, swallowing heavily. It didn’t help much. He could still see the motion of the city flying past behind his closed lids. His stomach lurched. “Actually, on second thought…”

It took but a moment to wind back through the stream of cars and to a stretch of the road that broke off from the fast part. A highway off-ramp, Tessa called it, before slowing to a stop on the side of the road.

“Here, let’s take a walk,” Jem suggested, opening his door. Will searched for the latch that he’d used, not finding it until Tessa leaned over to pull it for him. She undid his seatbelt as well, letting it spring back to its place on the wall. Then he was out, taking a walk up and down the street to settle his stomach, Jem at his side.

“Did you feel sick the first time you rode in a car?” Will asked, after they’d passed Tessa and the car a few times.

Jem hummed. “Not particularly. But you have to understand, as a Silent Brother not much can touch you. Not aches or pains or emotions… nothing.”

“So the Silent Brothers use cars now?”

“No, I didn’t say that. It was a special occasion when I first rode in a car. The Silent Brothers still use their carriages.”

“Ah,” Will said, nodding knowingly. He paused where he stood, planting his hands on his hips to stare out at all the buildings that seemed to stretch toward the sky. He felt distinctly out of place, despite the modern clothes he wore—he was sure that every person who set eyes on him knew he was very much out of his element, someone displaced in time. It was discomfiting, thinking about how much there was to learn.

“Here,” Jem said, and Will turned to him. He was unwrapping a small, flat stick of something, which he then held out. “It’s called gum. Chew it but don’t swallow it. It might help a little with the motion sickness.”

Will took the stick, popping it into his mouth and biting down. He found out a moment later that he shouldn’t have been quite so hasty about it—it was so strongly mint-flavored that his eyes were nearly watering. He shook his head, making a face that only got more pinched when he caught Jem laughing.

“Bastard,” Will said, emphatically.

Jem only laughed harder, his dark eyes crinkling up. Then he shook his head, turning to look at the same city-scape that Will was staring down. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. It must be hard.”

Will smiled, now watching Jem more than the city around them. “It’s really not. I don’t regret coming to the future.”

“You don’t? Not at all?” Jem asked, still staring outward.

It was easy to see why Jem was concerned. Will wasn’t known for thinking things through. Breathing in, Will concentrated on chewing for a moment. The gum was strange and malleable in his mouth, but he kept onward, adjusting. Then he breathed out a minty breath, searching for the honesty that was still difficult to bring up sometimes. He looked at Jem, at the dark hair and the flushed cheeks and the healthy weight of him, and pushed himself to say, “Look, I… I gave up a lot to be here. I’m well aware of that. I’m sad for what I’ve lost and what I’ve missed. But having you and Tessa, both, together, is worth everything.”

“…Alright,” Jem breathed. He didn’t sound exactly convinced, but Will wouldn’t take it back. He’d just have to make Jem see. 

They stood side by side for a while longer, each thinking their thoughts, before Jem suggested they get back to Tessa.

Moments later, Will was back in the car, brimming with determination. He was still a Shadowhunter, after everything—he wasn’t going to let a little speed get the better of him. 

Tessa, on the other hand, wouldn’t hear it—she kept them off the highway the rest of the way to the airport. It was probably for the best, in all honesty. They made it to their destination with no other major incidents, parking in a far lot. Tessa handed the keys to the car to a porter behind a desk in a small building with enormous windows (a thing that seemed to be the norm here—Will had seen more wall-to-wall glass in the last twenty hours than he’d seen in his entire previous live), and then they caught another vehicle—a bus, this time—to the airport terminal.

The airport itself was another experience. It was, first and foremost, _huge_. And it needed to be, Will soon learned, because the airplanes they were to ride in? _Enormous_. If a car was a sizable sixteen-hundred kilograms, then these behemoths must have been… god, Will couldn’t even calculate it. Easily eight times the weight, he was sure. And that wasn’t including the dozens upon dozens of people that entered each giant metal tube. Will would never have thought one of them could move, let alone _fly_ , until he saw one descending from above with a massive roar.

“Come on, we need to get along before we’re late,” Tessa said at his side, and he realized that he’d stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, staring. He started walking once more with a jolt as Jem, holding Tessa’s bag at his side and his violin on his back, laughed once again.

They managed to get inside, and Will was happy to let Tessa do all the talking because he was immediately enamored with all the strange things to be found all around, as well as the voices that seemed to come from the heavens themselves. 

“Intercom system,” Jem said, as Will looked around for the giant who he assumed was announcing things. And then, “Kiosks,” this time pointing at the machines set up in the lobby of the airport. Will stared. He’d been introduced to the television, or TV as they called it, in the hotel room, with it’s flat screen and remote control. He wasn’t sure what made the difference between a TV and a kiosk but there must have been some distinction. 

Tessa, meanwhile, had bypassed the kiosks in order to talk to one of the people at the desks on the far side of the room. Will followed slowly, trying not to let his jaw drop too far or stare too long. Especially not at the people—like the one with what looked like a metal bull ring through her nose and the hair on her head shaved so that she had a strip of gravity-defying blue hair going from the top of her forehead to the back of her neck.

“Mohawk,” Jem murmured as the girl—or perhaps it was a boy, it was hard to tell sometimes with everyone in trousers—strode purposefully past.

“Mohawk?” Will repeated.

Jem nodded, motioning to his own head. “The hair. It’s called a mohawk when it’s styled like that.”

“Ah. And… how do you make it blue? Are mundanes using spells now?”

“No, no. Just bleach and dye. I’ll show you some pictures once we’re past security.”

Will nodded, and then took Tessa’s hand as she came back holding some sheets of paper.

Security, it turned out, was _not_ like the security of the Devil Tavern. Instead of a bouncer, there was a great hubbub of people separating themselves into lines, taking off shoes and coats and setting them in odd square bins that they then sent through even odder machines. The people themselves then walked, sock-footed, through more machines—large ones that reminded Will of doorless doorways—after which they collected their affects and continued on into the greater airport, or, occasionally, were pulled aside to get a device like one of Henry’s sensors waved about their body. 

“Are we going to go through there?” Will asked, half-hoping they would, just to see if all the machines and devices and their strange, electrical wires tingled. Tessa, however, shook her head and, with the snap of her fingers, glamoured the three of them. They walked past the waiting queues just like that, heading into the airport. 

“Terminal A, gate seven,” Tessa murmured, studying the papers in her hand. Jem adjusted the violin slung across his back. After a moment Tessa raised her head, looking at the enormous series of letters and numbers written above the hallways. “Ah, this way,” she said, leading them toward a hallway marked with an A.

The airport itself was bustling, full of shops and vendors and people and all kinds of other things. Bakeries and restaurants lined the walls, opposite great open areas with rows upon rows of mostly occupied chairs, each under a large number. Will watched everything closely, all the people running about trying to get to their airplanes in time, and counted the numbers passing by until they reached seven.

“This is ours, is it not?” he asked. 

Tessa nodded. “We have a bit of time before the flight still,” she said. “Would you like to wander around a bit?”

“Most definitely,” Will said, grinning. He then veered directly into a little shop filled to the brim with modern books, dragging the other two with him. He began flipping through as many books as he could get his hands on, reading bizarre futuristic summaries and declarations of ‘From the New York Times Best Sellers List!’ and ‘Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author!’ 

“What are novels like these days?” he asked, staring at a cover with a bare-chested man on it.

“There are a lot more genres now,” Tessa said, lifting a book with a paper cover with a picture of a long-legged creature off a shelf. Jem was leaning over to read the spines of a series of religious books. “Mysteries and horror and… ah, you might like this one. It’s from 1897, a story about an invasion of alien creatures. A classic.”

“I don’t want something from 1897. I want something new, something from the future. Like… this one.”

Will plucked a book from a shelf labeled ‘New Releases’, opening it to a random page. He’d just read something about a vampire named Edward when Tessa snatched the book from his hands, barely stifling giggles. 

“You don’t want that one,” she said. “It’s the fourth in a series, first of all, and second of all I’m not letting you read _Twilight_ until you’re adequately prepared.”

“Fine,” Will said, picking up another. “What about this one?”

She studied the cover thoughtfully. “ _Hunger games_ , huh? You could do worse than a soft sci-fi dystopian revolution. It could be an interesting introduction to consumerist capitalist culture.”

“To what, now?”

“Modern economics, dear. We’ve come a long way since the industrial revolutions of the 1800s. You have a lot of catching up to do.”

Will grinned. “Then I suppose I’ll just have to get to reading, hm?”

And with that, he went off to Jem to pester him into buying the book for him.

Half an hour later found the three of them sitting side by side in the waiting area of gate A7, each with a book on their lap. Will was trying to read but things kept catching his attention—people rushing past and overhead intercom announcements telling people to watch their luggage and crying babies and god, how did anyone in the future get anything done with all this _noise_?

He meant to turn to Jem and ask, but when he did he found Jem focused solely on the pages of his book, his lips moving silently as he read the words. It was such a small thing to notice, but it was exactly how Jem used to read books in the library of the London Institute, and Will could only smile. He turned back to his own book.

And then, before he knew it, Tessa was tapping his shoulder and standing up and they were getting in line to board the plane. The cramped, crowded plane, with the tiny windows and artificial lights and the flight attendants with odd smiles on their faces as they greeted everyone aboard and ushered them into their tiny padded seats.

“Here, you can take the window,” Jem, who was watching him closely, said. “It feels less like everyone is on top of everyone else when you can see outside.”

“Right,” Will said, sliding in. Jem took a moment to stow away his violin and Tessa’s bag overhead, and then took the middle seat, leaving Tessa in the aisle seat. There were more seatbelts, and a whole safety demonstration, half of which went right over Will’s head, and then, with a deep rumble much lower and more intense than the car’s, the plane came to life.

“Your ears are going to pop,” Jem said, distracting Will from the sub-audible feel of the massive engine. “Chewing gum tends to help. Do you want another piece?”

Will nodded, nibbling it slowly so he wouldn’t get that eye-watering rush of mint once again. Why the future loved mint so much he might never understand. They stayed like that for a minute or two, Will watching the concrete outside the window and chewing his gum.

And then… and _then_ … they began to _move_.

Like the car before it, the beginning wasn’t so bad. There was a rush of adrenaline as the massive vehicle picked up speed and rushed forward down the concrete, and the force of the plane lifting off the ground made his stomach drop out from inside him, but he was more excited than anything else. As they climbed higher and higher, however, the ground grew farther and farther away, dizzyingly so, and Will clutched for Jem’s hand.

“It’s okay, this is all normal,” Jem said soothingly, and Will nodded once again, his eyes huge as he stared out at the city receding into the distance below them. He squeezed Jem’s fingers as the plane tilted, turning in the air, the left wing dropping toward the ground. And then they were flying straight and true, heading West, away from the morning sun.

Which was all fine and dandy, except for the part where Will realized that he was in a huge metal tube soaring through the air thousands of feet above the earth. And oh, yeah, the motion sickness from the car earlier had started to come back.

Will swallowed, sweat breaking out across his skin.

“Doing okay?” Jem asked. Tessa was leaning over to see around him, clearly worried, as well.

“I… I’m feeling nauseated again,” Will admitted. His hands were slick with sweat, a pleasant experience for Jem, he was sure.

But Jem only held on tighter, directing him to focus on a distant point out the window. It helped for a while, but then they hit the cloud layer. The pressure of gray-white clouds against the window did NOT help—it felt like the world was closing in around him, ready to suffocate him.

“Don’t like this,” he managed to say.

“Do you want to trade seats with me?” Jem asked, his eyes wide and sincere. Will hesitated and then nodded.

It was a shuffle, but soon enough they in their new order, Jem and then Will and then Tessa. As Tessa hailed one of the flight attendants, Jem reached into the pocket attached to the seat in front of him and produced a small, white paper bag that he handed to Will. “Barf bag,” he said. “In case you feel like you need to throw up.”

“Lovely,” Will said. He hoped he wouldn’t. Throwing up in a paper bag did not sound like a fun time. His stomach was definitely unsettled, but he felt better now that he was away from the window. The flight attendant advised him to focus his eyes on a point at the front of the cabin and to concentrate on his breathing, taking deep, slow breaths. They also brought him a strange can of bubbling liquid, which Tessa told him was called soda. “Or Ginger Ale, to be exact, though some people call it pop or cola,” she said. 

He knew she was trying to distract him, and it was kind of working—he sipped at the sweet liquid, making a face as the bubbles burst on his tongue. “How much longer?” he asked.

Tessa sighed. “Seven and a half hours. I’m sure you’ll get used to it eventually. As long as there’s no turbulence you’ll be okay.”

Okay. Okay. He was going to be okay. He took another deep breath and sipped again at his Ginger Ale. On his other side, Jem shifted, clearing his throat. “You don’t happen to have a stele with you, do you? I know a rune or two that might help.”

Will shook his head. “Forgot to grab one from the Institute before I left. I should have thought of it, but I was preoccupied.”

Jem smiled woefully. “Looks like you’re out of luck, in that case. I left all of mine with Jace.”

“Why is that?” Tessa asked, leaning around Will.

Jem bit his lip for a moment. “…I wasn’t… when I came came to London, I… just… I didn’t want to be a Shadowhunter any longer. I didn’t have my _parabatai_ and it just felt so wrong to fight without you, Will, that I just… I wanted to leave it all behind and start anew. So I gave up all my Shadowhunter things and came here and… well. Now you’re back.” He laughed, reaching for Will’s hand once again. 

Tessa, on Will’s other side, took his other hand, and Will felt a lump growing in his throat. He set to chewing his gum, fighting off the tears. “You told me that I could be my own mirror,” he said, when he was absolutely sure he wasn’t going to cry. “But you can’t be your own?”

Jem laughed softly. “I never planned for life without you, Will. I was so absolutely sure that I’d die first that I was entirely unprepared for the reality of living on beyond you. You can’t blame me for that.”

And it was true, Will couldn’t. “Still,” he said, to be petulant, giving Jem a slanted smile. And then, without warning, the seat dropped out from under him.

“Oh!” Tessa said, her grip tightening. The plane jerked and rattled, and the seatbelt signs above them flashed. Will’s stomach, which had just begun to settle, suddenly lurched. An announcement came on, telling them that they’d hit some turbulence and to please keep their seatbelts on until the pilots said it was okay to move about the cabin. No one seemed overtly concerned as Will looked wildly around, though a few of them were eyeing him.

“Turbulence is normal,” Jem said, and Will nodded. He didn’t dare open his mouth, however, his stomach doing nervous flips inside him. He thought about the ground, so dizzyingly far away… and then tried desperately to _stop_ thinking about it. It didn’t work. His head spun.

It was a combination of everything that added up to be just a little bit too much. The height and the rumble of the engines and the motion and the clouds and the turbulence all joined together in a whirl and before he knew it, the nausea was pressed insistently up against the back of his tongue. Will let go of both Jem and Tessa’s hands and scrambled for the barf bag.

Not a moment too soon. There went the gum, lost to the wave of vomit that came pouring from his mouth. He grimaced at the taste, spitting into the bag. He tried to take a deep breath and find his balance again, but before he could the plane rattled once more. Will’s stomach lurched, and he lurched with it, bringing up another wave. People around them cried out, a child pointing in his direction and lights going on above their heads, but he could only focus on his stomach emptying itself. 

Jem, cursing, rested a gentle hand on his back. “We are so sorry, we had no idea this would happen. It’s his first time on an airplane—” Tessa was saying to the people around them, holding onto the armrest as the plane shook. Will coughed, choking up another mouthful of Ginger Ale. His eyes were watering, his head spinning. He wondered, offhand, if warlocks ever got motion sickness. 

And then it was over, his stomach clenching but nothing else coming up. He stayed hunched over the bag for an agonizingly long time, trying to breathe deeply in between the heaves until they tapered off again, along with the turbulence that caused them.

“You alright?” Jem asked, pressing his hand to the back of Will’s neck as Will uncurled. Will nodded, not quite trusting his mouth. Eyeing the pallor of Will’s face and the sweat at his temples, Jem made the _excellent_ decision to fish out a second barf bag, holding it at the ready.

Will, thankfully, didn’t need it. He leaned back in his seat, slouching down as far as the seatbelt would let him, and closed his eyes. Deep breath in, deep breath out… ugh. They still had seven hours of this to go, but as long as there was no more turbulence he would be okay. 

Probably.

“You still don’t regret this?” Jem asked, his dark eyes watching Will closely.

Will grit his teeth. “No.”

“…Not even a little?”

Will swallowed, hard. He could feel Tessa shifting on his other side, listening in, so he made sure to enunciate when he said, “Once upon a time, I thought I could have nothing and no one. The only person I could allow to come close was a boy who was already dying. To learn that the curse was not real, to learn that I was _allowed_ to love and be loved, and then to have you torn from me—it was more than I could bear. So no, I don’t regret this. I don’t regret this for a moment.”

…There must have been something in his eyes that finally convinced Jem, for Jem didn’t ask again.

Time was a slow drift, hours creeping past. The flight attendants came to check in, offering him some more Ginger Ale, which he declined. They then came through with a little cart, selling drinks and food to all the passengers. It was bizarre, watching them passing out salads at the pinnacle of their flight, but no more bizarre than anything else the future had offered yet far. Tessa and Jem seemed to be enjoying themselves; they split a sandwich and some ‘pretzels’, a bag of which Tessa offered to Will. He grimaced and shook his head. Anything placed into his stomach was going to be ejected post-haste, and he would really rather not throw up again. 

It was then, as he was trying to distract himself with any random thought that he could snag, that he recalled the metaphor he was trying to parse in the car. Glass panes all around, no way to block out the stimulation… the future was full of places and things and situations where there was just _so much_ going on. Will knew that feeling, had often reveled in it—at the raid on de Quincy’s house, for instance. But the future was different—it was cold and harsh and loud, made of concrete and metal and electric lights. The windshield and windows of a car were the indifferent eyes of the people here that viewed the modern chaos all around and were unmoved.

Will, on the other hand… Will stared all around him at the pandemonium and couldn’t help but take it all in, and in, and in, until he felt like he might explode, or, at the very least, throw up his breakfast. Everything moved so fast and was so complicated and he felt more overwhelmed than he ever had before.

He shook his head a little at the thought. That may have been so, but at the same time… at the same time he knew he could do this, knew it like he knew he wouldn’t be the same without Jem. He could and he _would_ do this. He would close his eyes and count the minutes and he would get _through this_.

So he did. He made it to three hours in, when Tessa pulled out her book again. Four hours in, and Jem closed his eyes, dozing off. Five hours in… six… seven… and then, exactly seven hours and fifty-six minutes after their departure from London, they arrived in New York, and Will was okay. 

The flight attendants were kind enough to let the three of them off first. Will, having viscerally felt all seven hours and fifty-six minutes of the flight, could not have been happier. He was so excited to feel ground under his feet that he nearly stumbled as he took his first shaky step out onto the jet bridge. Tessa had to grab him by the elbow, walking him slowly down. “Sorry,” he said, laughing. The laughter trailed off into a groan as Tessa led him to an open chair in the waiting area of this new airport. He planted his elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands.

“So how was your first time flying?” Tessa asked.

Will moaned. “I miss horses,” he said. And then, as the thought struck him, he turned his face up to Tessa, his eyes huge. “Please, _please_ tell me you live close enough to walk home.”

Tessa’s face pinched as she tried not to laugh at his misfortune. “Unfortunately not. We have another drive ahead of us, I’m afraid.”

God. _Damnit_.

At least there was the walk to the parking lot. By the time they reached Tessa’s car, a cute little thing that was painted a sky blue that Will thought matched his eyes, Will no longer felt so tense that he wanted to die. He opened the back door and slid in, grabbing Jem’s sleeve to pull him in as well. He then buckled his seatbelt and promptly stretched it as far as it would go as he keeled over and planted his head on Jem’s lap.

“Tell me if you start feeling sick again, okay?” Tessa asked from the front. Will grunted. Then he closed his eyes, breathing deeply. He felt himself relax slightly as Jem ran a hand through his hair.

He awoke some time later to find that the car was off, sitting silently before a large building. The door beside his head was open, Tessa kneeling down in the opening so that she was level with him. “I know you’ve had an exciting day, but perhaps you should wait to sleep until you’re in bed,” she said, smiling. 

Will groaned, stretching. Somehow, between the motion of the car and Jem’s ministrations, he’d managed to nod off. “Right,” he said, and fought his way to his feet, following Tessa up to her flat with Jem bringing up the rear.

In any other circumstances, Will would have been absolutely fascinated by the way Tessa had decorated her flat with shelves and shelves of books. As it was, however, he was hardly able to stay standing. He was reeling, overstimulated and exhausted, and he wanted nothing more than to keel over where he stood.

“Sit,” Tessa commanded, pushing him into a chair in the small kitchen. She then went about putting water into a small receptacle of pasta, sticking it into a weird box with a door on the front of it, and waiting as the inside of the box lit up and the container spun lazily around to the sound of a gentle hum. It finished whatever it was doing and Tessa pulled it out, adding a very orange-looking sauce from a packet. She then placed it before Will. 

“What is this?” Will asked, eyeing it.

“Mac and cheese,” Tessa replied, setting a fork down as well. “Eat it and then it’s bedtime.”

So Will did, testing his stomach. He didn’t feel the need to bring the odd mixture (was this stuff really cheese?) back up, thank god. He then changed into his pajamas, brushed his teeth with more mint paste, and collapsed into Tessa’s bed.

“Goodnight, Will,” Tessa said from beside him, leaning down to press her lips to his temple. He huffed, holding out an arm until she laughed and laid down under the blankets with him, pressing her back to his chest. Just on her other side Jem settled, turning off the bedside lamp. His hand came to rest on top of the arm that Will had slung across Tessa’s waist. 

And Will… he didn’t know what tortures tomorrow would bring. More motion sickness and crowds and flying metal tubes, maybe. Maybe more overstimulation and chaos and cold, cold glass. Whatever it was, however… whatever happened, he didn’t care, so long as he got to fall asleep next to Tessa and Jem at the end of the day. So long as he had them, his two favorite people in any period, past, present, or future, he knew he would be all right.

**Author's Note:**

> Just learned that in the books Tessa has a flat in London, lads. Let’s assume for this AU that she hasn’t stayed in London for any significant amount of time since she lived in the London Institute, hence the hotel. Also having never been through security in Britain I have no idea what it’s like. Search engines find questions like ‘what is airport security like in x country’ very hard to parse.


End file.
